"Why Didn't I Learn This in High School"

You probably did

I’ve been listening to a new podcast recently. It is two guys talking about books, it’s nothing unique, other than the book selection. One guy, Tony, is big on Asian history and is trying to expand the breadth of his library. The other, Andy, has found himself enamored by metafiction and post-modern literature. These are not things that interest me directly, but the books they have discussed so far are much more up my alley than most other bookish places on the internet. However, there have been some frustrating points as I have been listening to them in the background. One is their conflation of capitalism and rich people being stupid with money. This is almost unescapable at this point, especially among the left leaning online types, but still grating. The more pertinent to me is their constant usage of the phrase, especially by Tony, “I never learned that in school” and even extrapolating to “US history education is terrible.”

Post-Academic Enlightenment Complex

Comments like those above are often prompted in the podcast when they are discussing an American history book. The conversation often goes like this:

I read this book on [historical topic] and it really opened my eyes to how the [people the book discusses] were treated in American history. To me, this feels like essential reading for all Americans. It’s a real shame that our education system doesn’t like to teach about [this topic] and misinforms us.

A book that has been discussed a few times in this manner is Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. This book is a discussion of the myriad wars that were fought on the American frontier between the Americans and Native Americans. It dives into the false contracts and terrible conditions that the Indians were subjected to, as well. I agree that the information presented in this book ought to be taught in history classes. The problem is, this book was released in 1970! To pretend that this book has had no influence on American education is ludicrous. I don’t want to read ahead in the AP notes I have from high school to ensure that I have fresh eyes when I discuss them in the podcast. But from memory, I am sure we talked about the bad contracts, reservations, and wars. We spoke of the Trail of Tears and Jackson’s relentless assaults on the Native population. We also, as I pointed out in the podcast, were taught about Native culture as reciprocal, nature-loving, and very clan oriented. I disagree with the framing the American Indians as set pieces, but to pretend they were not understood as perpetual victims in history is a mistake.

This phenomenon that pervades the bookish spaces online needs a name, if only to point it out when you see it. I have tentatively called it the Post-Academic Enlightenment Complex (PAEC), in which someone reads about a historical event after high school or college and assumes they weren’t ever taught about it. It prompts further reading and learning more about something they knew little or nothing about previously. For those with a PAEC, it then becomes their life’s mission to ensure that this information is spread far and wide. Beyond that, they take this new-found enlightenment as proof that the education system had failed them and that this must be taught to the future generations to prevent this folly from repeating. This then becomes part of their worldview, that the Truth has been suppressed to sate the needs of the System¹.

PAEC is basically a combination of confirmation bias, neo-gnosticism, and a superiority complex with a shade of the mimetic adherence to the “US History Education Bad” ideal. Perhaps there is more to this psychologically, but this is the best approximation I have found so far for this phenomenon².

History is Not as it Was

The major issue I have with this is that these new ideas that this person learned were more likely forgotten than not taught. This impulse is strong, though, as seen in books like Lies My Teacher Told Me. There is a deep-seated need to illuminate the failures of the education system. Now, I am not one to shy away from criticism of the education system. I am an open advocate of school choice and opponent of the teacher’s union. But, I think these books and discussion like this are faulty in and of themselves. I have seen proof of the specious nature of this myself at two separate times in my life.

The first instance was shortly after leaving high school. I watched Oliver Stone’s The Untold History of the United States and remember thinking, “I know all of this.” I couldn’t tell you everything I remembered at this point, but I rememeber vividly thinking that³. Now, this was only a couple of years after high school, so the information I had learned was still fresh in my mind. So this could have been new information to some, especially those that went to high school decades ago. But I wouldn’t even be sure that it was “new” to them.

In his review of the series, Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz stated that, “Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick’s new book and accompanying ten-part televised documentary have a misleading title. Most if not all of the interpretations that they present in The Untold History of the United States—from the war in the Philippines to the one in Afghanistan—have appeared in revisionist histories of American foreign policy written over the last fifty years.”

From my limited understanding of the history of history education, I think his assessment is true. There is an insistence that the history education we receive today is the same as that of the 1950s. We learn that we created a new country given to us by God and have spread nothing but democratic ideals and enlightenment thinking throughout the world⁴. This is clearly not the case. Historians were exploring beyond the reaches of the “winners” of history far before A People’s History was even release, as seen in Dee Brown’s work.

The second instance was just last year. I read a book on King Philip’s War and came away thinking that thought: why didn’t I learn about this? The problem is, I did. Even worse, at the beginning of each unit in my history class, of which there were eight, we picked a person from a list to do a bit of individual research on. My pick for the first unit was none other than King Philip. Yes, I had forgotten about the person I had to research on my own. This revelation was funny to me at the time, but I realized that this is likely the same thing that happened to all of those that proclaim that they didn’t learn X fact in high school.

The Challenge in Teaching

I understand the impulse, though. Learning about certain historical facts can be enlightening and exciting. It is to me. Just ask my wife. But, every time I hear the phrase “this should be taught in high school,” I think, '“and what would you replace?”

In just the first season, I read, either entirely or part of, eighteen books and about half as many articles and primary sources. If we were to count the total number of words in these sources, it would likely be more than a million⁵. From those sources, I gathered about 100,000 words of notes. These were hand written summations of what I was reading. If you listened to all of the podcast so far, you heard likely 80% of the words I wrote. So, the first 14 hours of content in this podcast used about 8% of the amount of words that I read. In short, if I were to edit the notes, they could work as a book itself. It likely would be terrible, but it would be a book.

Now imagine the job of a history teacher. She has to do this same task for what I predict to be fifteen more eras. Then ensure it is engaging for sixteen-year-olds, meet education standards, and ensure nothing is missing from the history in about 150 hours of teaching time. What those with PAEC end up doing is comparing the level of detail necessary to pull this off, years later, to a book that is about a singular period of time, person, or event. Saying “why didn’t we learn this” in reference to a history class is like saying “why didn’t I learn this in high school physics” after learning about air resistance. That is to say, it probably isn’t necessary to get into this level of detail when the main goal is keeping you awake. Beyond that, it likely was taught, or at the very least mentioned, but you were too busy thinking about your math test, or your boyfriend, or sleeping.

On top of that, there is another goal in history education, and I think education in general that is missing when it is taught through a pure fact-based lens. To me, learning all of the facts of a given period of time is less important than understanding the themes of those given periods. Comparing and contrasting different eras helps us understand the way policies, peoples, and events shape history. There is a reason 1930 and 1950 are very different eras in America and anyone who went through the US school system should be able to say why. I wouldn’t expect anyone to name more than a couple New Deal bills, or the minute details about WWII, but they should know that they happened. People should know certain dates and years of events to help with contextualizing history as well, but is it necessary to know if Sugar Act or the Stamp Act came first? What history education should be in America is a way for every citizen to reach a base level of knowledge so conversations can be had. If someone wants to learn more about any period or person, more power to him. There is far more history to learn than can be taught in a single class, so it shouldn’t be the end, but rather the beginning.

The Lost Art

What I don’t want to do is just complain. My entire podcast is based on responding to people with a PAEC. So I can’t complain too much, anyway. I also don’t mean to be harsh on someone who has actually learned something beyond high school and college. That is a laudable task. I would just hope that it was done with some humility is all. Discovering, or re-discovering, facts of the world without being prompted by a teacher is something that should be taught in schools. This is something that I can agree needs to change. Learning for the sake of it has been lost in our modern society to some extent. Every bit of knowledge can be leveraged for some gain. I wish there were more people like Tony who read about history that is interesting to them. By all means, tell the world what you learned. But please, don’t blame the teachers for not learning about this sooner. They probably did teach it to you.

1. This is always vague. It often seems to imply that more conservative people are controlling the narrative in the public school system. Perhaps, more charitably it is the overall cultural hegemony that disallows students from learning the dark history of the American past. I think either explanation is extremely dubious and gets very close to conspiratorial thinking.

2. As stated in the previous footnote, I think the conspiratorial brain also plays a role. That seems to be a smaller feature of the PAEC, though. I will have to explore this further at a later time.

3. I also realized after some digging that this was partially based on A People’s History. This was likely the seminal moment for my disdain towards ideological histories.

4. I’m not convinced that this is even how it was taught, but that’s the perception at the very least.

5. I don’t want to get in the weeds, but I just want to give a basis for this number. If each book is about 80,000 words and each article about 5,000, this is over 1.5 million words alone. I read most of the books in their entirety.